


Metamorphmagus

by tielan



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Character Study, Gen, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-03-07
Updated: 2011-03-07
Packaged: 2017-10-16 04:17:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/168323
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tielan/pseuds/tielan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, she’s not sure who she is.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Metamorphmagus

**Author's Note:**

> Written sometime in 2003.

Sometimes, she’s not sure who she is.

Other times, the certainty is so strong, she can feel it in every pore of her body.

Muggles have a disease they call schizophrenia – or is that disassociative personality disorder? – she’s not sure. At any rate, the idea is that there’s several personalities capable of taking over a single body.

There is no word to describe one personality capable of changing into multiple bodies.

Or maybe there is.

 _Metamorphmagus_.

She shifts, shapes, changes. Like the sea in all it’s moods, now grey, now green, now dark, now light.

In the world, she has her own place, somewhere that she fits – although ‘fitting in’ is not such a difficult thing for her – at least, not on the surface.

There have been moments when she wondered if this was a common problem for metamorphmagi. Whether the ability to become someone else – if only in appearance – has altered her personality.

While the body is not the sum and total of one’s self, the sense of self frequently is bound up in one’s appearance.

Her uncertainty about her identity manifests itself in clumsiness. While most people accustom themselves to the dimensions of a single body, she must accustom herself to the dimensions of many. Taller, shorter, longer arms, shorter legs. When in one form, she can easily reach across the table to grab the salt cellar. In another one, she must ask for someone else to pass it.

Sometimes she forgets which body she is in.

Sometimes she forgets who she is.

Her ancestry is recitable – like the times tables she learned as a child.

Her ancestry is not who she is.

The noble and ancient forbears of the House of Black would have been horrified to contemplate the idea that one of their descendants would be a ‘Mudblood’.

The humble and ordinary ancestors of the Tonks family would have been astounded at the thought that one of their descendants would be a witch.

From this blending of bloods – the magical with the Muggle – Nymphadora has come to be, a study in contrasts, a mingling of worlds.

And sometimes she wonders if she will ever really know herself.

In the meantime, action will suffice in place of self-understanding.

So she acts.


End file.
